1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to vehicle navigation apparatus and a programs control vehicle navigation apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
In a conventional navigation apparatus, when a place of departure (or the current position), and a destination are input, search data, such as road data, are read out and a route search is performed based on preset search logic, for example, the shortest traveling distance, or preference for a particular road type. When a user selects one of the routes that are returned by a search, the user is guided by visual signals and/or audio signals along the selected route until the user reaches the destination.
In some cases, however, a route returned by a search based only on search logic and search data as described above may not be a route that the user prefers. Therefore, conventional navigation apparatus accumulate driving data and predict a user's preferences, such as a road or roads that the user prefers, and search for a route accordingly. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-292251 describes a navigation apparatus that stores the number of times that a user has passed certain intersections and searches for a route by giving preference to routes containing intersections that the user frequently passes. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-16991 describes another navigation apparatus that registers traveling circumstances such as a width of road, a kind of road, or traveling speed and predicts a user's preferences based on the registered traveling circumstances.